Diarrhea can be caused by small, heat stable peptide toxins (ST) produced by various pathogenic bacteria (1). In developing countries, such toxins may be responsible for 50% to 80% of the reported cases of diarrhea (2). ST are also a major cause of diarrhea in laboratory and domestic animals (3). Thus, it can be concluded that it is desirable to be able to control diarrhea by understanding the mechanism of action of ST, and more specifically, controlling diarrhea by affecting that mechanism.
It has been previously determined that heat stable enterotoxins bind to a cell surface receptor in the intestine which subsequently leads to an activation of guanylyl cyclase (4,5). The rise in cyclic GMP then stimulates fluid secretion thereby causing diarrhea.
Previous reports have concluded that the ST receptor is a distinctly different protein than quanylyl cyclase based on partial chromatographic separation of a detergent-solublized ST-binding protein from guanylyl cyclase activity (6,7). However, the ST binding and cyclase activities were not completely resolved by these studies. Further, the detergent solublized binding protein representing a functional receptor was not fully demonstrated in these studies.
Previous studies have shown that plasma membrane forms of guanylyl cylase can serve as cell-surface receptors for various peptides (8,9). Two distinct forms of plasma membrane guanylyl cylase designated as GC-A and GC-B have been isolated from various mammalian tissues and shown to bind natriuretic peptides (10,11,12,13).
The inventors of the present invention have significantly furthered the research relating to the ST receptor in combination with the research relating to plasma membrane forms of guanylyl cylase by identifying a unique, apparently intestinal specific guanylyl cylase designated as GC-C by the inventors. The inventors show herein the ability of this discovery to be utilized in the field of therapeutics, receptor detection, and ligand detection.